Generally, naphthenic mineral oils, paraffinic mineral oils, alkylbenzenes, polyglycolic oils, ester oils and mixtures thereof, which have each a kinematic viscosity of 10–200 cSt at 40° C., as well as these oils incorporated with suitable additives have been used as refrigerator oils.
On the other hand, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCS) type refrigerants, such as CFC-11, CFC-12, CFC-113 and HCFC-22, have been used for refrigerators.
Of these CFCS, CFCS such as CFC-11, CFC-12 and CFC-113, which are obtained by substituting all the hydrogen atoms of hydrocarbons thereof by halogen atoms including chlorine atoms, may lead to the destruction of the ozone layer, and therefore, the use of the CFCS has been controlled. Accordingly, hydrogen-containing halogenocarbons, such as HFC-134a and HFC-152a, have been being used as substitutes for CFCs. HFC-134a is especially promising as a substitute refrigerant since it is similar in thermodynamic properties to CFC-12 which has heretofore been used in many kinds of refrigerators of home cold-storage chests, air-conditioners and the like.
Refrigerator oils require various properties, among which their compatibility with refrigerants is extremely important in regard to lubricity and system efficiency in refrigerators. However, conventional refrigerator oils comprising, as the base oils, naphthenic oils, paraffinic oils, alkylbenzenes, heretofore known ester oils and the like, are hardly compatible with hydrogen-containing halogenocarbons such as HFC-134a. Therefore, if these conventional refrigerator oils are used in combination with HFC-134a, the resulting mixture will separate into two layers at normal temperature so as to degrade the oil-returnability which is the most important within the refrigeration system and cause various troubles such as a decrease in refrigeration efficiency, deterioration of lubricity and the consequent seizure of the compressor within the system whereby the refrigerator oils are made unsuitable for use as such. In addition, polyglycolic oils are also known as refrigerator oils for their high viscosity index and are disclosed in, for example, JP-A-57-42119 and JP-A-61-52880 and JP-A-57-51795. However, the polyglycolic oils disclosed in these prior art publications are not fully compatible with HFC-134a thereby raising the same problems as above and rendering them unusable.
Further, U.S. Pat. No. 4,755,316 discloses polyglycolic refrigerator oils which are compatible with HFC-134a and U.S. Pat. No. 4,851,144 discloses refrigerator oils comprising a mixture of an ester and a polyglycol which are compatible with HFC-134a. In addition, the present inventors developed polyglycolic refrigerator oils which have excellent compatibility with HFC-134a as compared with conventional known refrigerator oils and, filed an application for a patent for the thus developed polyglycolic refrigerator oils and have already obtained a patent (U.S. Pat. No. 4,948,525) therefor. It has been found, however, that the polyglycolic oils raise problems as to their high compatibility with water and inferior electrical insulating property.
On the other hand, refrigerator oils used in compressors of home refrigerators and the like are required to have a high electrical insulating property. Among the known refrigerator oils, alkylbenzenes and the mineral oils have the highest insulating property, but they are hardly compatible with hydrogen-containing halogenocarbons such as HFC-134a as mentioned above. WO 90/12849 describes a composition comprising a hydrogen-containing halogenocarbon and a specific ester lubricant. No refrigerator oil having both high compatibility with hydrogen-containing halogenocarbons such as HFC-134a and a high insulating property has been developed prior to the present invention.